Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers remarks during the 2015 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting award in Washington March 23, 2015.
IN PHOTO: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers remarks during the 2015 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting award in Washington March 23, 2015. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Attorney David Kendall, representing Hillary Clinton, said his client has cleared the email server used when she was still the secretary of the state and had all correspondences hosted by hdr22@clintonemail.com permanently deleted last year. Kendall’s statement came as a response to the subpoena issued by Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Committee that investigates the attacks against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

When asked to turn over the email server for independent review, Kendall was quick to refuse saying there is nothing to review in hdr22@clintonemail.com, which may pertain to Clinton’s correspondence during her tenure, and even if such review were appropriate or legally authorised. Reacting to such statements, Gowdy was quoted by the media as saying that the deletion could have happened after Oct 28, 2014 when the Department of State for the first time asked the secretary to return her public record to the Department. He added that “the secretary was not only the sole arbiter of what was public record, she also summarily decided to delete all emails from her server insuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest.”

But Kendall defended his client by arguing Gowdy should look to the State Department instead of asking Clinton to surrender her email server. According to Kendall, the Department is uniquely created to make documents available to requests. Besides, he stressed that Clinton did her part in the investigation by handing over to the department all work-related correspondences from 2009 to 2013, during Clinton’s tenure as the secretary.

Putting A Halt To The Political Charade

After the exchange of opinion, Elijah Cummings, representative of Maryland, declared it is time to move on and for the committee to stop the political charade and instead make these documents public and schedule Clinton’s public testimony. Cummings further wrote that the bulk of Kendall’s letter offered nothing new as it only confirmed what the committee has already known.

The House of Committee is investigating the attack on the U.S. consular compound in Benghazi, Libya staged by Islamic militants on Sep 11, 2012 night, killing the then Ambassador J. Christoper Stevens and Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.

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